


Four Times Darcy Lewis Did Not Get Kidnapped (And One Time She Did)

by grav_ity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-08 11:25:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13457244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grav_ity/pseuds/grav_ity
Summary: Four Times Darcy Lewis Did Not Get Kidnapped And One Time She Did", or "Four Times Darcy Said 'Yes' and One Time She Said 'Hell, No!' (she actually said ‘Fuck no!', but, you know, kids might read this someday)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: You know, for a fluffy one-off of a story idea, this really became its own thing. And then it stopped being a thing. For, like, five years. And then I was all "Does the world really need another Avengers-era Darcy-Moves-To-New-York story?" and then I was all "Yes. Yes it does."
> 
> Disclaimer: I wish! (Note: that was 2013 grav_ity talking. 2018 grav_ity is a bit more jaded. and by “a bit” I mean “ugggggghhhhhh”)
> 
> Spoilers: Avengers, the movie
> 
> Rating: M
> 
> Summary: It goes without saying that there could be pretty personal consequences if she spends all her time hanging out with the Avengers.

_Chapter One_

Darcy arrives in New York after the dust has settled, but only just. It’s not at all in the way that she expected experience would be. There will be no cramped apartment with too many people and a floorplan that defies the laws of physics. Jane has been recalled from where ever it was SHIELD sent her, and once she’d stopped yelling at people for leaving her out of the loop while her boyfriend was in town, she’d graciously agreed to stick around and finish what she started in New Mexico. She’d insisted on a very large lab, a generous living allowance, and that Darcy be hired on at full wages to be her assistant. Pepper Potts had stepped in, and by the time Darcy gets to the train station, her apartment in the Avengers’ Tower is already tastefully decorated with most of her belongings.

It’s Jane and Pepper in the car to meet her, and thank goodness, because Darcy really needs to see a familiar face before her life takes another, she assumes, turn towards the bizarre. Happy drives, while Darcy tries not to gawk out the window. It’s very hard, but Pepper seems to understand. There’s more open space than there used to be around the Tower’s base, and the building itself bears some very dramatic scars, but already reconstruction is in full swing.

“This is one amazing place you have here, Ms. Potts,” Darcy says. It’s still a bit windy in the atrium, thanks to the lack of glass in several of the windows, but at least the hole where Hulk smashed Loki into the floor has mostly been filled in.

“It’s a work in progress,” Pepper says. “Though Tony did take advantage of the near destruction to move some things around.”

“Oh?” says Darcy, more to be polite than anything else. It’s not like she knew much about the floorplan to begin with.

“We changed the top floors to accommodate more living quarters, and moved the R&D labs down,” Pepper tells her. A screen appears beside her and highlights the floors as she mentions them. “And, of course, the panic room.”

That one flashes green on the screen when Pepper mentions it, and Darcy realizes immediately that the Stark Tower panic room is not for keeping something _out_.

“Well, clearly I’ll fit right in,” Darcy says. She bites her tongue. “I’m sorry, Ms. Potts. I tend to say the first thing that pops into my mind when I’m nervous, and this is cool, but very nervous.”

Pepper laughs at that and says “Please, call me Pepper. If you’re going to live here, you might as well call everyone by their actual name.”

“I can do that,” Darcy says. Jane snickers something that sounds suspiciously like “so much for nerves” into her hand, but Darcy doesn’t deign to acknowledge her. “It’s not going to be weird having me live here, right? I mean, clearly you’ve got space but I’m not really in the club.”

“We’re taking new members,” comes a voice from behind the bar that Darcy knows all too well from the late night talk show circuit. “Any particular talents?”

“I microwave a mean pop tart,” Darcy says, having decided on the train that, nerves allowing, some measure of awe and respect are to be accorded to the Black Widow and the Hulk, she isn’t going to hold back when it comes to Tony Stark.

“Application accepted,” Tony says, sliding a glass down the bar into Pepper’s waiting hand. “JARVIS, we’re going to need pop tarts.”

“I’ll look into it, sir,” comes a disembodied voice.

“I’m pretty sure Pepper’s programmed him to say that when what he really means is “Sorry, Tony, but your girlfriend has other ideas,”” Tony grumbles.

“I can’t imagine why,” Jane says.

“Welcome to Stark Tower, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS says.

“Uh, thanks,” Darcy replies, not sure where to look.

“Let’s go upstairs and get you settled in before Happy collapses,” Pepper says. 

“I didn’t pack that much,” Darcy protests, and it’s really, really true, but only because a truck had arrived earlier in the week to take the bulk of her stuff.

“Happy made the classic mistake of boxing and then drinking with Captain America last night,” Tony explains. “He probably wasn’t safe to drive, but Pepper said I couldn’t do it myself.”

“You’ve had enough PR for the month,” Pepper says. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Okay, so it turns out that Darcy’s apartment kind of _does_ defy the laws of physics. But the good ones, that mean more space that should be possible and a truly terrifying array of automated devices responsible for everything from making breakfast to opening a secure phone line to Russia.

“We’ll get to that later,” says Pepper, when Darcy mentions the phone. “JARVIS will do his thing with your cell, and then you’ll be set.”

The “thing” turns out to be Darcy’s security clearance, which ensures that she’ll always be able to get through doors she is supposed to and also that she’ll be properly notified in the event of assault by bad-guy. She also has a panic button, which she is to carry on her person at all times if she leaves the Tower.

“Whoa,” she says, when Pepper is finished detailing the incredible amount of response that activating the panic button will receive.

“We take safety very seriously,” Jane says.

“Well, I knew that,” Darcy says, try to look at the device without touching it. “But you’re, you know, dating them.”

“You’re going to be in the labs, Darcy, with access to some very sensitive information,” Pepper points out. “Plus now that you’ve offered to make pop tarts, Tony is liable to get over-protective in a big way.”

“Oh,” is all she says.

It’s not second thoughts, not exactly, because there’s no way in Hell that Darcy is going _anywhere_ , now that she’s here. But it’s thoughts, all the same. She’d been told that Phil Coulson hadn’t survived the Loki incident, and he was a highly trained agent, who had been holding a massive and futuristic weapon at the time of his demise. She has a button. And, apparently, a really fast response team that might not be fast enough.

“Tony had mine made into jewelry,” Pepper says, absently fingering her bracelet. “It’s probably the easiest way.”

“I like that idea,” Darcy says. “I don’t want to just carry it in my purse or shoe or something.”

“Talk to Steve at dinner,” Jane says. “He’s got an eye for design, and his sketches are good enough that Tony can make something for you.”

“This is the craziest job ever,” Darcy says. “I get pop tarts and transcribe notes, and somehow Captain America is designing my jewelry.”

“Yeah, about that,” Pepper says, opening the door and waving them all back into the hallway. “We have a couple of ideas about your job description.”

And so Darcy ends up sitting at a table talking about jewelry design with Captain freaking America, while Tony Stark and Bruce Banner argue about some kind of technology Darcy was pretty sure only existed in Star Trek movies. It’s simultaneously exactly what she was expecting and completely bizarre.

“That never really goes away,” says Pepper, when Darcy says as much.

“Which is what makes it awesome!” says Tony.

“Do you like this one?” says Steve, holding out his sketch book.

He has been much more agreeable than Darcy anticipated. It’s after dinner, and everyone has turned to drinks, but Steve pulled out a sketch book instead. After some quick questions about colour and material preferences, they had agreed that a necklace would suit Darcy’s purpose, and he’d set to sketching. Darcy does her very best not to watch over his shoulder, and honestly it’s not all that hard. There are a lot of other interesting people in the room. It looks like a very classy version of a Sunday night football party, except it’s Thursday and Tony keeps flipping through the news channels before anyone else really gets the gist of what’s happening.

The necklace is simple, and will therefore go with nearly everything in her wardrobe. It looks delicate, but Tony has promised to make the chain of some material Darcy is pretty sure is make-believe, and the casing around the actual panic button will be activated by her fingerprint. It’s pretty much perfect, and Darcy feels a little weird that some guy she’s only known for a couple of hours and is also Captain freaking America was able to make something that’s so _her_. She turns away from that line of thought, on the grounds that it leads nowhere good.

“Yes,” Darcy says, and then despite her best efforts, she smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

It’s alarming how quickly alarming becomes normal. Darcy still doesn’t have an official job description, but she does have a desk, a company email address and steady paycheque. She has no problems filling her time. Bruce’s abysmal hand writing is a bit of a stumbling block at first, but once she trains herself to read his hieroglyphic scratchings, she’s usually able to finish her transcription by lunch. Some days she has things to do in the lab afterwards, but usually by the time she’s reminded her pet scientists to eat something containing an actual food group, they’re deep into things she’s not quite up to yet. She makes sure there’s coffee and extra writing utensils lying around, and then she stages a retreat.

She spends a lot of afternoons playing video games with Tony while he’s hiding from various military liaisons or dodging reporters (or, to be honest, just responsibility in general). It takes her a couple of days to figure out that the games are usually things he designed and programmed himself (he often stops playing after his avatar dies so that he can shout insults at the coding), or training exercises meant to keep his flying reflexes sharp, and she learns quite a bit about how the Avengers work as a unit while she watches.

Tony plays with both hands and a set of foot pedals, which help him practice flying. The game or training scenario is displayed on three screens, two of which look like his helmet displays. The middle screen looks like an actual video game Darcy might last more than ten seconds in. She usually plays as Hawkeye, because he tends to be above the hand to hand, and because she has the option of turning on the targeting scanners. She still dies a lot, though, and Tony adds a code to her Hawkeye-Avatar that just resuscitates her each time to avoid stopping the play.

“Seriously, Lewis,” he says, after a streak of particularly gruesome demises, “I know why I’m doing this. Why the hell are you? Do you enjoy giving Legolas a complex by letting him die all the time?”

“I thought it would help me learn how they work,” Darcy says. “I can just watch, if that’s better.”

He looks at her for a while, and then runs his hands through his hair.

“I didn’t mean you shouldn’t try,” he says. “One of the things that makes Nick Fury’s job so much fun is that we’re all very different. We train differently, we fight differently, and he’s the one who got stuck herding cats. I do this because I’m not genetically altered. I need to be good with machines. You’re probably more useful somewhere else.”

“Thanks,” says Darcy. “I think.”

“Well, you could get me a soda before you go,” Tony says.

“You could get it yourself,” Darcy fires back. “Think of the multi-tasking training it would provide.”

But she gets him one anyway, because she wants one herself, and settles back on the sofa to watch the fight patterns Tony’s practicing. Now that she’s not desperately trying to stay alive, she can see what he means. Captain America is in charge, but it’s Iron Man and Hawkeye who see what’s coming, and the Black Widow who deals with the brunt of bad guys so that Cap can ensure the well-being of any civilians who might be around. When Hulk and Thor are included in the simulation, Thor splits his time between helping Steve and keeping the Hulk from getting out of control. It varies a bit, of course, thanks to terrain and whether or not Thor is actually present. They might be a herd of cats, as Tony said, but at least the logarithmic versions of them are getting better at working with one another.

When the enormous screen in the media room gets too much for her, she takes Tony’s advice and heads for the natural light in the gym. For a week, she watches Natasha and Clint do completely unreasonable things with knives and arrows and fists (and shoes). She doesn’t see Steve much, just when Natasha needs a punching bag and Clint has been able to plead out, and Bruce never comes at all. She understands Bruce’s absence, but after a while, she asks straight up what Steve does with all his time.

“He goes to a boxing ring off-site,” Natasha reports.

“Fury’s down with that?” Darcy asks. There’s a weird and complicated amount of oversight, and Darcy gets the impression that the more they stay in the Tower, the more Fury will have to bargain with later, should he need to. She realizes she’s fiddling with the chain of the necklace Steve designed and forces her hands down to her sides.

“He’s tailed,” Clint says. “I think he likes have some time to himself.”

“Plus he likes the smell,” Natasha says. “He says his gym smells like real work and effort.”

Darcy can only imagine what Tony has said in defense of his state-of-the-art, impeccably designed and outfitted work-out area, but as a robot shuffles around picking up discarded towels and free-weights, she thinks Steve might have a point.

“Is this really hard to do?” she asks, gesturing at the array of weights, bikes, and machines she can’t identify in front of her. “I mean, is there a ‘for beginners’ setting?”

“Why the interest?” Natasha asks.

“Well, I have this panic button,” Darcy says, “and a taser. I’d kind of like to be able to do a roundhouse kick, at least, don’t you think?”

Clint and Natasha exchange a look where they have a whole conversation without actually saying anything. Darcy waits, because trying to decipher them would probably require years of intensive study, and also she isn’t entirely sure she wants to know.

“I think it’s a pretty good idea,” Clint says, finally. “You never know.”

“Actually, I _do_ know,” Darcy says. “I saw it on the news. And last week when there was that evacuation drill and Jane and I spent three hours in a tiny room waiting for confirmation that it actually _was_ a drill, I decided I’m not doing that again. Kicking someone in the groin only works if they’re humanoid, and that’s not a guarantee around here.”

Natasha decides that’s a good answer, and Darcy finds herself in the shower at the end of every day with an assortment of truly startling bruises. It hurts and it’s hard, but she can see herself improving, and sometimes she goes entire hours without thinking about the alarm in the necklace she carries around her neck.

“What happened?” Steve says at dinner, three days after she starts her training.

He had reached out for the mashed potatoes, but when Darcy tries to pass them over, he catches sight of the mottled purple fingermarks on her arms. His own fingers close around them, dwarfing the bruises made by Natasha’s hands, but gentle in their hold. Darcy fights down the herd of butterflies that tries to migrate from her stomach to…well, to someplace she’s not entirely sure Steve would appreciate.

“Oh, I’m learning unarmed combat,” she says breezily. She should probably try to get her arm back, but his fingers are moving gently against her skin and it’s very nice. “Today I tried to get out of Natasha’s holds.”

“You’re not supposed to break her,” Steve says across the table to Natasha. He still hasn’t let go of Darcy’s arm, but he’s taken the potatoes so she doesn’t have to hold them up anymore.

“She’s doing fine, Steve,” Natasha says. “If you want to teach her your Marquess of Queensbury crap, go right ahead.”

Which is how Darcy ends up sitting on a bench in a very smelly locker room three days later, trying to wrestle herself into a pair of boxing gloves.

“You okay in there?” Steve calls through the door.

“I’m decent, if that’s what you’re asking,” she shouts back. “These gloves are beyond me, though. Does that mean I get an F?”

“You’re not really supposed to put them on by yourself,” he says, stepping through the door into the locker room. “Hands up,” he says, and she mimics him.

He wraps each hand with a light tape, holding her wrist steady with the hand that’s not holding the tape. She finds it very difficult to breathe, which is ridiculous because she’s actually getting better at the whole “stamina” thing, and she hasn’t even done anything yet. She flexes her fingers when he’s done, and then he puts the gloves on, tying them in a knot that’s much too loose.

“I think you’re going to have to tie me up tighter than that,” she says, and regrets it immediately when his face turns bright red.

But he doesn’t look away. Instead he tightens the laces, eyelet by eyelet, moving slowly towards her elbow. And he never stops looking at her. Darcy bites her tongue to keep from licking her lips. That would probably make things worse.

“Ready?” he asks, and for a moment she forgets why they’re here.

“I’m ready,” she says, breathless, and follows him to where he’s set the punching bag.

He stands behind her to teach her the forms, hands bracing her elbows and knees pushing hers into the right stance. Once she’s got it, he steps back to watch, but not very far. At first, she’s really bad, but then she finds the rhythm of the bag and her feet and her hands and her heart, and she’s at least making contact, even if she doubts there’s much power behind her hits. She can work on that later.

When he calls time, she turns, exhausted and elated, and he catches her gloves to pull them off. He doesn’t linger, exactly, but he doesn’t hurry either, and it takes her a while to catch her breath.

“I like that!” she says, even though it’s plainly obvious.

“Me too,” he says, the pads of his thumbs on her palms. She is suddenly very, very still. “Your form needs a bit of work, though. You keep dropping your elbow.”

“Show me,” she says, turning her back on him and raising her fists to the bag.

He steps behind her. He might be closer this time, but also her heart is beating pretty fast on its own, so she’s probably a poor judge of that sort of thing right now. He’s taller than her, so he has to bend in order to place her elbows correctly, and then lean over her as he guides her fists through the punch and block. The ghost of a breath slides past her ear, and she’s unable to fight off the shudder that responds to it.

He jumps back like she’s burned him, and she turns around.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s fine, Steve,” Darcy says. “You’re just very pretty sometimes.”

Dammit, why does she always say the first thing that pops into her mind? He has a quizzical look on his face, and she has no idea what it means.

“Sometimes?” he asks. There’s a smile in his eyes, and Darcy relaxes without thinking about it.

“Okay, most of the time,” Darcy admits. “Plus, you know, you’re very tall.”

He laughs softly, and she smiles. His face is always open, but here, in this place that he loves, there is a joy to him that is missing most of the time in the Tower. It makes it very easy to smile back. It also makes it easy to turn her face upwards when he steps back into her personal space, and to stand on her toes and wrap her arms around his neck when he kisses her.

His mouth is warm and soft, but his hands are on her hips, and they’re holding her very tightly. He lifts her right off her feet, which would be ridiculous for most other people, but makes sense for a guy who can bench press an actual bench without breaking a sweat. It’s not the most intense kiss Darcy’s ever had, but there’s a purpose to it that more than takes her breath away.

Steve sets her on her feet and straightens, effectively putting his mouth beyond her reach unless she decides to jump for it (which, to be honest, she is considering). He looks at her, measuring, and she knows she is currently sporting one of the goofiest smiles she’s ever had in her life.

“So,” he says, after a long moment. “Dinner?”

“Yes,” she says, and heads for the shower.  
 


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_  
Darcy likes Bruce’s lab the best. There’s paper there, for starters, even though Tony gripes about it. Actually, it’s probably _because_ Tony gripes about it. Bruce rather likes the tablet Tony designed for him, even though he is prevented by actually saying so by virtue of being male. But Darcy likes the smell of paper, so when she has a free moment, sometimes she just ducks in to see if he needs anything.

“God, how do you work in here?” she says when, instead of smelling paper and whatever radiation smells like, she smells what could be a week’s worth of half-drunk coffee cups and an unfortunate amount of very excellent, very wasted, food from Bruce’s favourite Chinese take-out. She’s been out in New Mexico with Jane for a weekend at the VLA, and apparently Bruce forgot to do everything but Science! while she was gone.

“What?” says Bruce, looking up. “It’s still Monday, right?”

“It is,” Darcy allows. “But only just. And seriously, what is that smell?”

“I had JARVIS send up dinner on Saturday,” Bruce explains, after taking a moment to think about it. “And then I probably forgot about it.”

“I think it might be a biohazard now, Doc,” Darcy says, and then the alarms start ringing.

Bruce is on his feet so quickly he’s almost a blur, and he’s pulling Darcy away from the door towards the back of the lab where she’s less likely to be seen from the hallway. He’s refreshingly not green, which is always nice.

“I was just kidding, JARVIS,” Darcy shouts. “I don’t think Bruce’s week-old take-out is really a biohazard.”

“Apologies, Miss Lewis,” JARVIS’ calm voice says. “I’ve actually detected several intruders.”

“Where?” asks Bruce.

“The roof, the atrium, and the corridors above this floor,” JARVIS recites. “Captain Rogers is already en route, and Mr. Stark is dressing as we speak.”

“Anybody we know?” Darcy asks.

“No,” says JARVIS. “Though they all appear to be human. They speak English with assorted accents, and I haven’t been able to thoroughly identify them yet.”

He manages to make it sound like this is because Darcy is distracting him.

Bruce looks at her, and she can almost hear him weighing his options.

“Go,” she says. “I can hide here and they might need you, even if these dudes are just regular if somewhat well informed bad guys.”

There’s an explosion directly above them, and Bruce clenches both hands into fists. Darcy can’t help but notice that his skin has taken on a slightly greenish cast.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, having to shout at the end of the sentence because there’s another explosion, closer. It sounds like Iron Man. She takes his glasses off his nose, and puts them in a drawer where, in theory, they’ll be safe. “Go!”

He does, finally, and she hunkers down under the workbench. The furniture should block anyone from seeing her, even if they enter the lab, but she has a semi-unobstructed view of the door. She realizes that she’s holding her pendant pretty firmly, and forces her fingers to unlock. Setting that thing off right now would help no one. Instead she gets out her phone and turns it to silent mode. She’s seen more than a few horror movies in her time, after all, and she’d always told her mother that someday it would have real life applications.

“Miss Lewis,” says JARVIS, both impossibly quiet and impossibly _close_. “They are about to breach the wall to your left.”

“Why can’t they use the door like _normal_ bad guys?” Darcy says, already moving to ensure she’s still concealed.

“Unknown,” JARVIS whispers. “Cover your ears.”

And that’s all the warning she gets before the wall blows in. That should, at least, take care of the take-out smell.

“Over here,” says a stranger’s voice, and Darcy is quiet as they try to hack into the computer on the work bench, right above her head.

They can’t, of course, because Tony is Tony, and their swearing is loud enough that Darcy isn’t afraid to breathe.

“Hey, there’s some paper notes,” says a second voice. “Don’t have to hack those.”

Damn it, Tony is going to be _insufferable_ after this. Darcy shadows the intruders carefully, making sure they can’t catch a glimpse of her as they head for the other bench. They could, if they looked in the right place, spot her. Which means, she mentally head-desks, that she can see them from an angle JARVIS probably can’t. She turns her phone to camera and snaps pictures of them and everything they take off the bench. Her pictures won’t be great, but Tony’s probably invented something that enhances cell phone pictures to some ridiculous degree.

“Let’s get out of here,” the first voice says.

“Hostage?” says the second voice. “The brunette was around here somewhere before the feeds went dead.”

“Not worth the time to mess around,” says the first voice. “Maybe if she was Banner’s.”

“Wait, JARVIS, pause it,” Tony says, hours later after he’s dodged all the clean-up and corralled them into the media room for repeated viewings of the video play back, the better to ‘insure consistency in our reports’. He smirks and opens another beer. “This is my favourite part.”

“We noticed,” says Pepper, who will probably put them all out of their misery after this last viewing. Anyway, they’re almost out of pizza.

“JARVIS, resume,” says Tony.

The only person who’s sunk further into the couch than Darcy has, is Bruce. She settles for burying her face in Steve’s shoulder, which means he pulls his arm tighter around her. He hasn’t stopped touching her since they met up in the lab during the aftermath, and after he saw the video the first time, he berated her for a full minute without stopping to breathe. She wishes that getting yelled at by Captain America, and then kissed breathless in front of about 15 SHIELD agents, was the most embarrassing thing that had happened to her today.

But no, the most embarrassing thing is on the screen, in digital hi-def with pristine resolution even though it’s been magnified to fit the ludicrously enormous TV. Darcy can’t watch as her on-screen self, upon hearing she’d only be worth kidnapping if she was “Banner’s”, crawls out from her exceptionally well concealed hiding space, and yells, “Are you fucking kidding me?” at the retreating backs of her apparently-not-that-interested potential captors.

“I’m getting you a gun,” Steve says, when Pepper distracts Tony from playing the video again. The others trickle out, Tony lagging behind to finish the last slice of Hawaiian. Steve’s voice is soft now, whispering into her ear, breath ruffling her ear. It probably shouldn’t be this exciting, being this close to him and imaging large weaponry, but, god dammit it, she faced death today, and came up swinging. “And I’ll show you how to use it.”

“The Widow’s bite worked just fine today,” Darcy points out, doing her best to pretend she doesn’t want to jump him in the media room whether Tony has left yet or not. And, to be fair, she only downed two of the bad guys before Natasha showed up to take care of the other three.

Steve is so exasperated by that that words fail him. She giggles, and leans up to kiss him. He’s not that exasperated, she learns quickly, because his hands weave into her hair, and then slide down to her waist to pull her into his lap. They’ve spent a fair amount of time kissing since that day in the gym, including a rather heated moment when she returned from New Mexico before going to check on the labs. For the most part it’s been playful, like they’re testing the waters, getting used to the idea of each other. This time, though, there’s an edge. It’s more than a little thrilling.

“Stop it,” says Tony, pretending to gag on the pizza. “Some of us just ate.”

“You are getting a gun,” Steve says, once he’s finished kissing her back a little more thoroughly than he might have had Tony not made an issue of it. She’s more than a little pink when he’s done. “Tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, with a mocking salute. Then she leans in to kiss him again.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

When it happens, it happens very quickly. One moment, they are standing on the sidewalk and Steve is telling her about a baseball game he saw, and a team that hasn’t played in New York since 1958, and the next, Natasha is holding an icepack to Darcy’s head and Steve is gone.

“It was a black van,” Darcy says. She shakes her head. There are still spots on her eyes. “I’m sorry, Natasha, I can’t remember anything else.”

“It’s okay,” Natasha says. “Clint’s on the traffic cams, and we’ve got eyes in the sky.”

A helicopter whirs over them, close, and Darcy flinches from the noise. Her neck feels scratched. She must have scraped it when she fell.

“I’m glad you thought to hit your panic button,” Natasha continues. “Did the necklace get lost in the scuffle?”

That’s probably what happened. Except she knows it didn’t. Slowly, and then like an avalanche, the pieces come back.

“There wasn’t much of a scuffle,” Darcy’s fragmented memories are clearing. “The van had pulled up, the door slid open, and I just pressed the button.”

“You have good instincts,” Natasha says. “What happened after that?”

Darcy realizes that there’s an agent beside her, studiously taking notes for the incident report. For a minute she’s annoyed by that, but then she realizes that if someone writes it down, she won’t have to repeat it fifteen times.

“Steve pushed me out of the way,” Darcy says, and can almost hear Natasha roll her eyes. “I fell away from the van, and then I saw the needle. They just plunged the goddamn thing right into his neck.”

Natasha winces. They haven’t really spent a lot of time figuring out what a person would need to take down Captain America, but if it’s a drug, it must pack one hell of a punch.

“I was watching the whole thing, but it felt like I was a mile away,” Darcy says. The frenetic activity around the abduction scene has lessened a bit, as the various agents move off in pursuit or to analyze what information they have. There’s an ambulance standing by, and Darcy realizes it’s probably for her, but she’s not ready for that yet. Natasha doesn’t push.

“That can happen,” Natasha says. “In combat. You analyze without thinking of it.”

“Whatever, it was creepy,” Darcy says. “But somehow I knew they were going to get him, that he wouldn’t save himself and that the cavalry wouldn’t get here in time. There’s a tracker in the panic button so you guys can find me when I activate it. I tore the necklace off and threw it in the van.”

Natasha is instantly replaced by the Black Widow, becoming even calmer and more deadly in the blink of an eye. She’s on her feet and speaking into her comm unit, and then she’s quiet for a moment and Darcy knows that marching orders are being issued. It’s probably back to Stark Tower for her. She does need medical attention, but she’d rather get it from Bruce and JARVIS, so she lets Natasha push her into a waiting car, and doesn’t protest when the agent driver takes off. It’s not like she can do anything else here that would be helpful.

+

It’s hours later when they bring him in, still groggy in Tony’s suit-strengthened arms. Darcy doesn’t hear any of the details, and frankly she doesn’t care. She just waits, rather impatiently, while Bruce runs a check on him, declares him on the mend, and lets her into the room.

“Miss Lewis.” JARVIS always sounds so polite, even in a crisis. It is alternately comforting and completely maddening. “I have set the windows to their opaque screening, and disabled all of the monitoring in this room. I will be excluding myself in a moment, but should you need anything, just call out and my system will reactivate.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” she says, but all of her attention is on Steve.

He’s _bruised_ , which she hadn’t even thought was possible. She’s seen him bounce back up after taking Natasha’s entire body to the face, but he looks haggard now. He’s sitting up at least, perched on the edge of the raised medical bed and clutching the protein shake Bruce left like it’s a lifeline, and Darcy realizes that it probably is. The way his body heals, he’s going to have to eat for three whole days.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says.

“I think that’s my line,” she replies. She moves closer, but resists the urge to throw herself at him. She’s not entirely sure he’ll catch her.

“I didn’t see what happened to you,” he says. “I just saw your necklace, and panicked.”

“I threw it in the van,” she tells him. “When I realized that you couldn’t get out. It was the only thing I could do to help.”

It all bubbles out of her then, the uselessness overwhelming her resolve to give him a bit of space while he’s getting better. He doesn’t stand, but he does hold out his arms, and she steps into them, ducking so he doesn’t spill the protein shake in her hair.

“You did great,” Steve says, words muffled by her hair. “If we just needed muscles to make the Avengers work, Bruce would be the only one on the pay-roll. We’re inclusive.”

“I don’t think the Avengers are that inclusive,” Darcy says.

“Why not?” Steve asks. “I mean, everyone knows what Pepper and Jane contribute. You think Fury doesn’t keep your file in the same cabinet where he keeps mine?”

“I think your file is bigger than a cabinet,” Darcy says. “I mean, I’ve seen parts of it. I think at least four agents wrote their dissertations on you.”

“That never stops being weird.” His voice is stronger now, and his arms feel stronger too. Darcy decides she never, ever wants to know what Bruce puts into those protein shakes.

“It just means they like you,” Darcy said. “No one ever wants Tony’s file.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Steve says. She looks up at him, glad to see him smiling.

“That’s what they pay me for,” Darcy shoots back. “Well, sort of. I mean, they’ve never really given me a job description, and it’s gone on long enough that I’ve got a routine, so I figure, why mess with it?”

He looks down at her for a long time, and then runs one finger along the scrape on her neck where she tore the necklace off. Darcy can’t help it: she shivers. Instantly, his mouth descends on hers, kissing her harder than he has before, and with such intensity that she would gasp for breath, except she can’t get far enough away from him to breathe so she thinks she might just explode instead.

His hands tighten at her waist, and she can’t stop the flinch when he does. He breaks away immediately, eyes wide, and she pushes herself to kiss him again, more gently this time, before explaining.

“I landed on the side-walk pretty hard,” she says.

“Show me,” he says.

“You know that means taking off my shirt, right?” She doesn’t really mind. She trusts JARVIS, and it’s not like Steve hasn’t seen her in a tank at the gym. But this is different.

He doesn’t answer, but pulls at the hem of her shirt – out, away from her skin first, and then up over her head when she lifts her arms. She turns so he can see, and hears him hiss a breath when he does. Most of her lower back is purple, and sitting is going to be awkward for a couple of days. Bruce has already told her not to let Natasha talk her into training again until it fades completely, and Darcy isn’t planning to argue.

“Darce,” he breathes, and she turns back to him quickly, pulling her shirt back on. It’s colder than she expected, or maybe it’s just that she’d stepped away from him, and the heat he generates.

“I’ll be okay,” she says. “I didn’t break anything, and Bruce says it’s not deep tissue bruising. It’ll hurt for a couple of days, but I won’t even get a scar.”

She lets him pull her back into his arms, and they stay there until Bruce knocks on the window, and a SHIELD agent comes in to debrief Steve. It doesn’t take very long, there’s not much he can tell them that Tony hasn’t already, and then Bruce is suggesting they go to bed.

“Together or separately,” he stammers once he realizes what he has implied. “It really doesn’t matter to me.”

“Thanks, doc,” Darcy says, and lets Steve pull her towards the elevator.

They do go to his room, but they settle in on the sofa rather than the bed. Steve eats some more, and Darcy starts to drift off, because the couch is so soft that she can’t feel the bruises on her back.

“Let’s not do this again, okay?” Steve says. She’s right on the edge of sleep, so it takes her a moment to realize he means the part where he got kidnapped, not the part where they tangled up in each other on the sofa afterwards.

She knows it might happen again. She knows it probably will happen again, this or something worse. But she doesn’t want to think about it right now, so she looks up at him, and lets him kiss her a few more times before he reaches for a blanket to pull over them.

“Yes,” she says, burrowing against him, and even though they both know it’s not a promise, it’s enough that they can get some rest.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the slight delay in uploading this chapter! I meant to post every other day, but then I was traveling and the international date line was involved and I am SO TIRED. Anyway.

_Chapter Five_

When Darcy wakes up alone in a dark room with no idea where she is or how long she was unconscious, she’s more angry than anything else. She had _plans_ for this afternoon, goddamnit, and none of them involve being used as bait in whatever international (or possibly interdimensional, to be honest) intrigues the Avengers might be tangled up in next. Plus she can use anger. If she thinks about her situation too closely, she might fall apart, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good.

She takes four deep breaths and then begins to take stock of her situation. The room is completely bare. There’s no furniture, and the walls are windowless and featureless both. The only light, if it can be called that, comes from a faint green stain—for lack of a better word—in the corner opposite where she is sitting. Darcy decides it’s some kind of moss and then does her best not to think about it. There’s a door—solid metal, probably—directly across from where she is sitting. She’s fully dressed. She’s not cold. She’s not tied up. She’s not hurt.

Her necklace is gone.

For the first time, tears threaten, and Darcy rubs at her eyes. There are a dozen reasons that whoever nabbed her might have grabbed her necklace without them knowing what it is. Tony had designed the tracker so that it couldn’t be detected, which came in handy at airports, and while Steve had made it pretty, it isn’t inherently valuable. Maybe whoever took it from her just liked the colour. And hasn’t wandered off too far. So that the Avengers will still be able to track it down.

Darcy takes another deep breath.

She’s never been particularly good at waiting, but right now that’s all she has to do. Thinking about her current situation isn’t appealing, so she thinks about Steve instead. They’ve been going slowly since his kidnapping, not because of his history or her timing, but because it’s actually been _fun_. She refuses to think about how she hasn’t taken every opportunity to climb him like a tree. She had, privately at least, resolved not to live like that once she’d realized what life in proximity to a superhero would be like. She’s certainly not going to cave now. Well, at least excepting the first few hours after she’s rescued and cleared by medical. That she _definitely_ has plans for.

In the distance, though distance is a difficult thing to judge when one is encased in concrete, Darcy hears an explosion, and the ground rumbles under her feet. She gets to her feet, bracing against the wall. She stares at the door, willing it to open, willing it to be _them_. She has zero problems with getting rescued, even if it will probably mean a large group of over-muscled busybodies mother hen her for the foreseeable future. She’s always been good at keeping her priorities in order.

Another explosion, this one definitely closer, rattles her. They must be close.

The door slides open, and Darcly blinks away from the bright light on her eyes. Her distraction is all the enemy needs to get the drop on her, not that she had much to fight him off with anyway, and he’s across the cell and dragging her by the hair before her pupils adjust. Darcy’s no idiot, so she starts kicking and screaming immediately, but he has her off balance, and she can’t make any of the hits land.

“That’s enough,” he says, and she feels the hard barrel of a gun pressed to her temple. “Now, let’s go find your friends.”

Darcy does not for a moment imagine that this is part of the rescue plan, but she out of the cell and several steps closer to Steve, so she’s willing to go along for now. She walks in front of her captor, who hasn’t let go of her hair or repositioned the gun.

There’s an explosion right in front of them, Darcy recognizes the smell of Tony’s arsenal.

“Fuck, it’s Lewis,” says the Iron Man suit, and the fire suppression system deploys instantly. Tony lands, his hands held up like he’s unarmed, and the mask slides back to reveal his face.

“Her life for safe passage, Stark,” says the man currently pulling Darcy’s hair out by the root.

“We can come to some arrangement like that, I’m sure,” Tony says. “You okay, Lewis? You’re looking a little green.”

Darcy tries not to relax against her captor’s hold. She’s safe, and he doesn’t know yet how incredibly messed up his day is about to become.

“I’m fine, Tony,” she says. “I’ll be even better once we are away from here.”

It’s not a particularly elaborate code phrase, but it gets the point across. Now all Darcy has to do is walk. She turns her back on Tony, sparing a brief thought as to where the hell Steve is, and then leads the asshole with the gun to her head to his doom.

She’s watched Tony try this gambit in the video simulations before, but a lot of it is reliant on how much the Hulk likes her. She’s not usually a gambler, but Hulk is a bet she’ll take every time. She and her captor are four steps out of the compound towards a helicopter when Hulk strikes. He must have been standing on the roof, waiting with uncharacteristic patience for her to emerge. The enormous mass of green and muscle lands in front of them, one incomparable hand wrapping around Darcy’s ribcage and the other a fist with a single destination in mind. It’s over very fast, and Darcy doesn’t breathe until the Hulk sets her down.

“Darcy smash?” he asks politely.

“No,” she says, looking at the crumpled form at their feet. “I’m good thanks.”

+++

Steve is waiting for them on the roof when they get back. The quinjet lands with little fanfare, and Tony doesn’t even make a smart remark when Darcy is down the ramp almost before the door is open. Belatedly, Darcy remembers Steve’s schedule for the day had included a live appearance on day time TV. He would have been on when the call came in, and Tony apparently hadn’t waited for him to return before coming after her with Bruce, Clint, and Natasha. It’s only been a few hours, but she’s pretty sure he has _aged_.

He catches her mid-stride, before the medical team can intervene, and envelopes her in the most crushing hug of her life. He remembers her mortality a moment after that, and relaxes a bit, but doesn’t release her.

“I’m okay,” she tells him, even though she knows he won’t believe it. “I’m okay.”

The doctor comes over, but Tony intercepts him. Darcy hears him say something about Dr. Banner having looked her over, but apparently no one is willing to come between her and Steve right now anyway. Tony doesn’t even tell them to get a room. He just herds everyone inside, leaving them to each other. Darcy has no intention of staying out here much longer anyway, but she appreciates the gesture.

“Come on,” she says, still muffled against Steve’s chest. “Take me home.”

+++

Darcy stands in the shower alone, rinsing the last of her ordeal down the drain in a rivulet of hot water. Her skin is pink—she has the temperature up as hot as she can stand it—but she turns off the water before she accidentally parboils herself, and stands dripping on the tiles. She dries off, doing the best she can to get the water out of her hair, and then drops the towels on the floor before walking back into the bedroom.

“No,” says Steve. He’s perched on the edge of the bed waiting for her. “Not like this.”

“Steve,” she says. “I know. I know what you mean. Look at me anyway.”

His gaze all but lights her on fire. She takes the last few steps to stand in front of him, and it’s almost like she can hear his heart racing, except it’s probably just her own. He runs his tongue across his lips.

“I had plans for tonight, Rogers,” she tells him. She’s standing close enough to touch him, but her arms stay at her sides. He will meet her halfway, or they won’t go on. “And I will be damned if I let some asshole with delusions of grandeur stop me.”

His eyes slide down her body and then back up to her face. Now she is _sure_ she can hear his heart racing. He reaches out and takes her hands, pulling her forward until she’s close enough that he can hook a hand behind her knee—one at a time—and pull her up to straddle his lap.

“I don’t want it to be all end-of-the-world, Steve,” she says. “But I’m not about to let a perfectly good opportunity pass by either.”

He laughs, his usually easy smile breaking through his bleak post-incident demeanour, and she kisses him. His hands wander up her legs to rest at her hips, and she presses against him. Her hair falls across both of them, and she grabs his hand when he would have tangled his fingers in it. She’s not strong enough to stop him, but he stops.

“Not today,” she says, and he nods.

He stands, carrying her with him like she weighs nothing, and turns around to half set, half throw her back on the bed. That makes her laugh, breaking the brief moment of unpleasant memories as she scrambles backwards into the pillows. He strips off efficiently and is on her between one breath and the next.

He trails kisses down her body, leaving a trail of fire beneath his tongue until he settles between her legs. She cards her fingers through his hair as he parts her thighs and goes to work, pressing her head back into the pillows as the heat of his mouth starts to overwhelm her. It isn’t anything like enough.

“Steve,” she says, and: “Steve.”

Then she doesn’t say anything, or at least not anything she remembers, though she does make quite a bit of noise. When she opens her eyes, he’s above her again, the smile on his mouth just a little bit smug. She kisses it right off of him, tongue chasing taste even as her hands pull him closer. She feels him stretch, hears the drawer where she’s put the box of condoms open and shut, sees him tear the foil and reach down to roll it on. Then he is inside of her and he moves, she moves, they move together.

It takes no time for them to find a rhythm. There’s a moment where Darcy could chase another orgasm if she wanted to, but chooses instead to focus on the body above her, her hands sliding down his back to hold him to her as he pushes, again and again. She sees the set of his mouth, the look in his eyes, and regrets absolutely nothing.

She feels the exact moment he lets go, the moment he decides to trust her strength and her body as much as she trusts his. He’s faster after that, and harder, and she meets every thrust.

“Darcy,” he says, and comes apart.

He’s careful not to put all his weight on her, but she doesn’t think she would mind if he did, at least for a little while. There will be time for that, like they made time for this. Their time is their own, and Darcy has always been fiercely protective of things she has decided are hers.

Steve shifts, rolling to his side and pulling her with him. She should get up, but she really doesn’t want to, so she lets him hold her instead. There’s so much they don’t know. They don’t know how Steve will age. They don’t know who will attack them next week. She’s decided not to care, but she’s also decided not to let not caring get in the way, and Steve seemed to agree with her on that point, at least. They can talk about the rest of it later.

Her blood is still running hot, ready for anything, but she can be patient now they’re here. She snuggles against him. When she moves, she feels the undeniable evidence that she’s not the only one still running hot. They are going to need so many snacks later, but it’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make.

“We’re not waiting until the next end-of-the-world to go again, right?” he asks after a moment.

“Fuck no,” she says, and kisses him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for taking this ride with me! I haven't written fic in like two and a half years, and this was exactly like coming home. Love you all!


End file.
